HOW DARK A RED IS HE?

THE COMMUNISTS NOW HOLD THE MOST SEATS IN THE DUMA. THEIR LEADER MAY NOT BE A STALINIST, BUT HE'S BAD NEWS

WHEN GENNADI ZYUGANOV, LEADER of Russia's Communist Party, steps onto the podium in a factory auditorium south of Moscow and poses under the red banners and hammer-and-sickle emblems, he transports his audience back to the time before Mikhail Gorbachev began his reforms, a sclerotic period of repression and decline now viewed by many as an era of stability. The crowd loves it. The hall rocks with applause as Zyuganov denounces the upheavals that have destroyed the old-style Soviet system, and he blasts the West for "forcing ideas, concepts and changes on our country that will never bear good fruit."

But on...

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